Troubled Waters (24 page)

“I could take you to lunch,” the prosecutor offered.

I grabbed a glance at the bedside clock: 10:45. “Make it brunch in about twenty minutes and you're on.”

“I'll pick you up at your hotel.”

I surveyed that portion of my limited wardrobe that wasn't lying in a rumpled heap on the floor. Linen and silk, I decided. Even if we weren't going to court, it was important that I maintain the image of New York lawyer, big-city hotshot. I turned on the air conditioner and sat in front of it as I slid my last pair of clean panty hose over my legs.

Thinking of my former life in New York brought a sharp memory of old Pops, standing in the corridor of the Kings County Supreme Court, begging me not to abandon him.

I was due in Harry the Toop's courtroom an hour ago. My head pounded and my stomach wouldn't remain still. But I had to call and make my apologies. And hope poor old Pops wasn't either warming a cell or fleeing a bench warrant.

It took several minutes and more than one operator to get me connected to the judge's chambers. I explained the situation to the law secretary, who took the opportunity to read me the riot act for waiting until the last minute—no, an hour after the last minute—to make the call.

Pops was in the courtroom, sitting in the second row, hat in hand. That more than anything else was what got me the adjournment. He'd had the guts to show up, knowing he might be tossed in the can.

The irony struck me as I put the receiver down. When I'd first come to Toledo, I'd have given anything for an excuse to get on the next plane to Brooklyn, and now I'd begged for the chance to stay.

I knocked on Ron's door to tell him where I was going. He and Zack were on their way out to the hospital to see Jan. “I hope she's better,” I said, not meeting the eyes of either.

Stoddard drove a white Cadillac. I walked around to the passenger side before he had time to step out and open the door for me. I slid in, running my hand appreciatively over the dark red leather.

“What are you in the mood for?” he asked as he maneuvered the long car out of the parking lot.

I'd always considered eggs a good hangover remedy. And they were even better with hot peppers. “Do you know where we can get huevos rancheros?”

“There's a great Mexican place out by the airport.”

“Okay.” I hoped he wouldn't talk business before we started eating. I needed food and more caffeine if I was going to hold my own in a negotiation.

But what were we going to negotiate? Did Ron know things he could trade for his freedom?

If he did, he hadn't told me about them. But that was nothing new; he hadn't told me he and Jan were married either.

Perhaps my best tactic would be to act as if Ron had information Stoddard would want—so long as that information wouldn't hurt Jan, if and when she woke up.

We passed neatly manicured suburban streets and shopping centers, movie theaters and fast-food joints. A blue sign with a plane on it gave the only clue that we were heading in the direction of the airport.

Had it only been two days ago that I'd landed at that tiny airport in the commuter plane from Cleveland? My head started to pound again.

Stoddard followed the blue airplane signs and finally took a right turn into a gravel parking lot next to a sprawling white clapboard restaurant. The name, Loma Linda's, promised Tex-Mex, as did the spicy smell in the air. I perked up just getting out of the car.

The place was unpretentious; wooden tables and yellowing posters of Mexico on the walls. We ordered. Stoddard asked for a margarita, but I opted for more coffee. I dipped a tortilla chip into the salsa and smiled as my taste buds came alive.

While we waited for our food, I organized my thoughts. I liked taking the offensive with my opponents. I searched my brain for something I could say that would send a message to the U.S. attorney that I wasn't here to be bullied, that I had weapons of my own.

But did I?

Before I had a chance to come up with one, Stoddard took away my initiative. “I told you I wanted Jan Gebhardt,” he said, “but I should have explained that I wanted her as a witness. I didn't think she'd turn state's evidence voluntarily, not with Harve Sobel turning her arrest into a crusade, so I was hoping you and your brother could persuade her to tell me what I need to know.”

“What you need to know about what?” A young woman in a Mexican peasant blouse and ruffled skirt set a plate of eggs, beans, rice, and soft tortillas in front of me. I nodded my gratitude and picked up a fork, grateful both for the food and for the chance to think.

Was he talking about Rap's drug dealing? And what if anything did Ron know about whatever Rap was up to?

The refried beans were creamy and topped with melted cheese. I rolled them around in my mouth and let the rich, earthy flavor sink in. I lifted a forkful of egg and savored the hot chili peppers. A few more bites, and the fog lifted ever so slightly.

“Some of your friends were using the sanctuary movement, and the refugees, as a cover for making counterfeit airplane parts.”

“I know.” I forked another piece of egg and assumed a bland air that said nothing Stoddard told me was going to be a surprise. “Dana Sobel told me.”

The deep-sea smile showed white, even teeth in his dark face. “Did she also tell you she made a deal with Walt Koeppler back in 1982?”

One positive benefit of a hangover is that your reactions are dulled. This can pass for calm indifference if you play it right. I tried to play it right, looking into Stoddard's brown eyes and asking, “So why wasn't Rap prosecuted at the time?”

It was the right question. The smile left Stoddard's face. “Because that was then and this is now.”

I forked another bite of egg as I deciphered this remark. “Nineteen eighty-two,” I murmured. “Reagan in the White House. Not exactly the most favorable climate for government regulation. So faulty parts in airplanes mostly flown overseas didn't merit a full-scale prosecution.”

“The word came down from on high. Bury the whole thing. No negative publicity about plane crashes. Sawicki was called in and told in no uncertain terms that novice U.S. attorneys didn't prosecute cases that belonged to the FAA.”

“And of course the FAA put the whole thing in the dumper,” I finished. “It's only now, with a Democrat in charge and a few plane crashes that there's a big flap in Washington about airline safety. So that's why this has surfaced again.”

The deep-sea smile was back. “And guess who happens to be the investigator general over at the National Transportation Safety Board?”

I remembered now that I'd seen Catherine Sawicki on television. A fortyish blond with a taste for navy suits with white piping. A midwestern girl playing hardball with the big boys. And now she wanted vindication on the charges she'd tried to bring fourteen years ago.

“Who quashed the investigation? Who asked Sawicki to lay off?” I knew the answer. Rap, of course. Rap with his little deals and his secrets and his dirty money. I just wanted to see whether or not Stoddard would say the name out loud.

Now the smile threatened to eat me like the little fish I was in this particular pool. “A congressman named John Wesley Tannock.”

I tried and failed to dismiss Stoddard's assertion. Wes and Tarky had made a point of reminding us that they weren't involved in the sanctuary movement, but that didn't mean Wes couldn't have done a favor for a constituent. But would he really have been stupid enough to cover up for Rap?

I would definitely follow up on Stoddard's information—after I went back to my room and lay down with an icebag on my head for several hours.

And never again, not in the history of time, would I take another drink.

But when Stoddard dropped me at the motel, Ted Havlicek was waiting for me in the lobby. “I've been thinking,” he said, “about that notebook Kenny was keeping.”

My head still pounded, but this was too promising a line of inquiry to be cut off. “Do you know where it is?”

He shook his head. “But I know where mine are. And maybe I wrote down something that might help us.”

“I thought reporters never kept their notes, in case some lawyer comes along and subpoenas them.” I was half teasing, but I also didn't want to waste my time on a wild-goose chase when I could be sleeping off the rest of my hangover.

Ted gave me the crooked smile I remembered. He'd capped his teeth, but they were still engagingly off-kilter. “I was a kid, Cass. Those were my first-ever real reporter notebooks. I'd be willing to bet they're in my mom's attic.”

He walked me to his rented Honda and opened the door to the passenger's side. He drove along city streets, refusing to take the expressway. We passed dilapidated storefront blocks that were a sharp contrast to the spiffed-up downtown. Finally he turned on a street of large duplex houses and pulled up behind a pickup truck parked at the curb.

The senior Havliceks were out; a note on the kitchen table informed Ted that they were at the movies. Ted got a stepladder and removed the hatch to the attic, which was filled with table lamps, ceramic figurines, a bowling ball in a powder blue case, and several years' worth of children's outgrown clothes.

It took us over an hour, but finally I opened a cardboard box that had Central Catholic High School yearbooks on top. I lifted them off, resisting an impulse to find a particularly geeky picture of young Ted. Underneath, stacked neatly in two piles, were tan-colored steno pads.

“Bingo!” I cried, lifting one pile in the air and waving it at Ted, who sat on the other side of the room rummaging through a second carton. He raised himself to his feet and walked over to where I knelt. He took the stack from my hand and opened the top one. “Yeah,” he said, “these are from '69, all right.”

I reached for the second pile. The top one contained an interview with Abrahan Murillo, leader of the migrant union. I flipped through it and set it aside.

The second one had Kenny Gebhardt's name in pencil on the cover.

My breath felt trapped in my chest. Sweat congealed on my skin and a shiver shook me. This notebook was Kenny's. That poor doomed kid wrote in this thing the very week he died.

“Ted,” I said, my voice sounding strange even to myself, “I think this one's Kenny's.”

He put down the stack of notebooks in his hand and leaned over my shoulder. “How did that get here? He never gave it to me.”

“Maybe he just shoved it into your desk at the Amigos Unidos office. Maybe he figured nobody would notice it there.”

I lifted the cardboard cover. This was the moment of truth. The moment when Kenny Gebhardt, dead almost twice as long as he'd been alive, would name his own killer.

The pages inside held words, scrawled in a boyish hand, but the notes were lacking one very important element. Instead of names, Kenny had used symbols. Symbols I didn't recognize. Symbols I couldn't relate to any of the people I'd known that summer.

I showed the page to Ted. He shook his head. “I don't know what the hell this means,” he said, his voice edged with frustration. “Here we found the damn thing, and we can't read it. It might as well have stayed in this stupid box for all the good it's going to do us.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY

July 17, 1982

Walt Koeppler wore a beige shirt, beige pants, tan desert boots. Even his eyeglass rims were the exact tint of flesh-colored Band-Aids. He looked like a Thurber cartoon, all roundness and paunch and balding forehead.

He scared the hell out of her.

But the last thing Dana Sobel ever did was let people know she was scared. She'd perfected the art as a serious little girl with more brains than beauty, honing her skills in chess tournaments that took her to the state championships. Winning through intimidation: the best gift her father ever gave her.

She sat in the INS office in the green and white federal building in downtown Toledo with her feet firmly planted on the floor, glaring into the face of the man behind the desk, daring him to scare her.

Which he did with a single question. “You have a son named Dylan Rapaport?” The voice was as deceptively bland as the rest of the man, quiet, flat, midwestern.

Dana nodded. Dylan was twelve now, tall and gangly like Rap but with her dark hair and eyes. He was a great kid, and hearing his name on this man's lips was deeply troubling.

“What about him?” Belligerence was her only ally; her tone was brusque.

“You tell me,” Walt Koeppler replied. “He's been seen near the church, near the trailers where the illegals were hidden. How much does he know about what you and your husband were doing?”

“Ex-husband,” Dana corrected automatically. As if it mattered. Her deep voice rose slightly as she said, “He rides his dirt bike out there. That's all. He doesn't know a thing about the refugees.”

“He does now,” Koeppler countered. “He must know why Jan Gebhardt and Ron Jameson were arrested.”

“He does now,” she agreed. “The whole county knows now. But he didn't before.” Dana clamped her mouth shut on the pleading tone she heard in her voice.

It was not the way to win chess games.
You don't have to take this shit
, she told herself.
Move your queen in and crowd him
. Staring straight into the man's strange beige eyes, she said, “This whole conversation is out of line and you know it. I have a lawyer; you can't talk to me without him being here.”

He smiled a thin beige smile, waved a soft hand with tiny red hairs on it at the phone and said, “By all means, Ms. Sobel, call your father. I'm sure he cares as much about his grandson as you do.”

Check. Queen taken by opponent's knight
. He knew what she knew: that Harve Sobel didn't lose cases, wouldn't back down no matter whose freedom was on the line. Not even his grandson's. He'd give Dylan the best defense he could, then punch the boy on the shoulder and tell him how proud he was as Dylan marched off to the youth farm to do time for something he hadn't done. Dana had been very careful not to let Dylan get too close.